One of the most exciting parts of any school Christmas production is the arrival of Jolly Old Saint Nick.
Especially if his extra-large red pants slip off.
Santa’s pants falling down is just one of the pitfalls that can happen when you have young students playing the role of the overweight man in red. It’s had Blackie/Big Rock School music instructor Judy Spangler laughing in spite of herself.
“Whenever Santa starts to groove — and he’s grooved western and rock and roll — there is a chance his pants are going to fall off,” Spangler said. “It’s happened about three times. The actors just gracefully try to get their pants up again and hang on.”
Dorian Goodwin, an accountant with the National Energy Board, found himself trying to balance pillows and belts rather than books while playing Santa at Blackie School about 15 years ago.
“I had pillows stuffed in my shirt and my pants and everything was out-of-place all the time,” Goodwin said. “There was this constant adjustment on stage.”
One of his biggest fans — and critics — was in the audience.
“My dad (Jim) told me: ‘You looked really awkward up there, always adjusting your pants,’” Dorian said with a laugh.
The Goodwins know of what they speak – they have been mainstays with the Windmill Players Theatre group for years.
Dorian didn’t exactly look the part of Santa. He has always been slender.
“I got the part because I could sing,” he said.
Music instructor Mike Duerbrouck has helped put on Christmas concerts at Longview, Percy Pegler and Westmount schools before shifting to Highwood High School in High River this year.
Duerbrouck also had a Santa pants malfunction at a Pegler performance about six years back.
“We had pillows stuffed in there to make her look fat and the pants either ripped or the drawstrings broke, but they fell,” Duerbrouck said. “She was the true professional. She stayed in character, pulled on the drawstring and continued her lines on the next scene while the elves around her lost it.”
Sometimes wardrobe issues can result in concert faux pas blossoming.
Duerbrouck had some Grade 3 students wilt while dressed as flowers for a production of The Nutcracker at Longview school years ago.
“They came out to do the Waltz of the Flowers and they had these giant flower cutouts around their heads,” Duerbrouck said. “Of course, these flowers didn’t stay on their heads very well. Two kids waltzed right off the risers… It wasn’t very funny at the time, but 10 years later it kind of is.”
They raise ’em with True Grit in Longview — cowboy tough. The students popped up and the show went on.
Sometimes, the young actors had to wing it, according to Dr. Morris Gibson instructor Bonnie Kentch.
“A Grade 1 boy was singing a solo in the song Silent Night,” Kentch said. “He was Gabriel the Angel and this little boy truly had an amazing angelic, high, clear singing voice.”
Mom had made the wings to match the boy’s talent.
“The costume had very large angel wings,” Kentch said.
“When he sang, the large angel wings; with all the tinsel and feathers went in his mouth and smothered his beautiful singing voice.
“It truly was a Silent Night.”
There are other setbacks in a Christmas play.
Getting a five-year-old not to wave to mom and dad is like trying to stop your dog from sticking his head out the window during a car trip.
They just can’t help themselves.
“It is like they are deer in the headlights — you can’t control that,” Spangler said. “I don’t even try.”
Duerbrouck used to get waves and wiggles over with early when he taught kindergarten.
“Always before a kindergarten show, I personally step out of the way and say, ‘okay, moms and dads, here is your chance to wave so we can get it out of the way,” Duerbrouck said. “But inevitably some kindergarten member is way too far off centre stage. There is always one kid who lifts up her dress in kindergartenland.”
There are never cat calls at a performance but sometimes, nature calls.
“We were all on stage, the first speaker is about to start the story and a little boy runs off stage saying, ‘I have to go to the bathroom!’” Kentch said.
Sometimes a mess-up can happen at just the perfect moment— like Clarence the guardian angel was looking after the teacher.
“One time, the power went off when there was a (musical) key change in the music,” Spangler said. “It might have been good timing, we weren’t always perfect at that moment.”
bcampbell@okotoks.greatwest.ca